I have a love/hate relationship with this movie.

Rating: 7/10 (4 November 2019)

28 Days Later is, for me, I strange blend of things I love in the horror genre and things I really can't stand.
The basic premise is this: Jim and Selena are two survivors of a viral plague that is incredibly infectious and turns people into foaming-at-the-mouth killers. This plague has devastated Britain. They must find a way to survive.
First of all, the post-apocalyptic Britain setting is right up my street. I'm slightly biased as a Brit, but I love seeing the deserted streets of my home nation's capital. The movie does a really good job of selling the feel of a world gone to ruin, even if some of the street shots are suspiciously clean and tidy (where are all the corpses?!)
The mere technical achievement of shutting down blocks of London to film is in itself impressive.
I'd go as far as to say the first half of the film is 10/10 fantastic, up to and including the part where the survivors meet Frank and his daughter. The characters are relatable and likeable, they behave sensibly and the innovative concept (at the time) of fast, extremely infectious "faux-zombies" is terrifying. Up until this point, the script is smart.
Unfortunately, the second half of the movie is, for me, where we start taking a very heavy detour away from fresh post-apocalyptic survival tale into tiresome horror cliche and some very lazy writing. It feels like the backend of a worse movie was sort of welded on for the second and third act.
First of all, the characters start acting stupidly, like they're in a terrible 80's teen slasher. Frank insists that they need to leave the safe, secure block of flats due to lack of food and rainfall, even though we've just seen Jim and Selena return from a convenience store that was absolutely stuffed with food and drink.
He also complains there has been no rainfall for 10 days...this is very unusual in England, so why not simply wait another day or two sipping Pepsis and get the inevitable deluge of fresh water that is surely on the way?
Instead, Frank and the others decide to leave their highly effective police riot gear behind and get into a completely vulnerable taxi cab, before driving through a pitch black tunnel filled with wrecked cars, infected citizens and corpses.
One of the characters even comments repeatedly on how utterly idiotic this idea is, as if that somehow excuses the writers for making the characters take this ludicrous course of action that no person in their right mind would ever do.
While the film is ratcheting up this false tension, the characters being *laughing*. Yes, that's right, because the process of driving recklessly over ruined cars while packs of screaming lunatics chase after you, intent on gouging your eyes out is...funny?
I've re-watched this scene several times and I still just can't understand what they were going for here. Maybe that sort of relief-laughter people sometimes do? But the actors seem genuinely happy, like they're laughing with boundless mirth at the prospect of their imminent agonising death. It's bizarre, and not in a good way.
Frank then gets infected screaming at some crows that are feasting on infected corpses. He was a great character and I think it was a mistake cutting him from the film so shortly after his first appearance. Even more annoyingly, he would have been fine if he'd been wearing his riot helmet that he had about 5 scenes ago, but the script is dropping in quality by this point so we're not supposed to think about it.
The final act for me kind of ruins the rest of the film further. It's intense, the soundtrack is good and there are some interesting scenes, but the portrayal of almost all of the soldiers as lunatic rapist psychopaths is too silly for me to really maintain my suspension of disbelief.
It's clear, perhaps too clear, that the intention was a "human nature is the real evil" kind of epilogue to the story. This was also a theme during the "chimps watching humans being violent" scene. But it's done so clumsily in the third act.
Somehow normal people with no military or survival training are mentally competent and sane after 28 days in post-Infection Britain. But mentally hardened, trained soldiers with the ability to defend themselves and good friends by their side are for some reason utterly insane by this point, to the point that they're convinced they need to rape and murder their way to a new society.
*After 28 days.* Let's not forget soldiers have fought for years in WW1 conditions, watching all their friends die, and still not experienced such a
drastic slide into degenerate psychopathic madness as these guys had in less than a month.
Again, with some creative scriptwriting this could have been plausible. Maybe the soldiers were rookie recruits, or they were failed soldiers awaiting court martial when they escaped during the outbreak. But it's never even touched on.
And that's the story of 28 Days Later; a fantastic first act, a middling second act and then a rather disappointing and rote conclusion. It's a watchable film with some interesting social commentary, it's just a shame they got lazy with the script towards the end.
7/10 for the first act alone, really.